I’ve been trying to look for scenes around me that are in the holiday spirit. I saw this large Christmas wreath on a house and thought it might make for an interesting photo. After shooting the picture, I thought that if I presented it in a soft focus that it might be more representitive of the impression I wanted to convey. A couple of filters later, and here is the result.
This is another snow scene from the Adirondacks by Wilmington, NY. Reprocessed as a single shot HDR, just to compare to the original photo. It seems that in almost all cases the HDR image is nicer, but I still need to start working with images shot specifically for HDR to really figure out the whole process.
Today’s post is another single-shot HDR photo, which I shot some time ago. In its original form I was going to use this for a Christmas card last year, but then I decided to use another photo. I reprocessed it as an HDR to see what kind of different look I could achieve.
The photo was made with a Nikon D700, with a Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 VR lens. Some of the shots which I took at this location had a nice reflection in the river, but those needed to be framed in portrait orientation to show the whole scene. The RAW file was originally processed in Adobe Lightroom, and the was just archived for future use. The HDR processing was done with Photomatix, and I also used Nik’s Color Efex to bring out the color in some of the foliage.
This photo was taken along the Ausable River near Wilmington, NY. I’m hoping to be able to take a trip up to that region again shortly, since I need to start getting Christmas Cards ready to send out. Hopefully my schedule will coincide with some fresh snowfall so that I will have a choice of winter scenes for this years cards.
In honor of the arrival of winter weather, I decided to reprocess this picture which I made last year. This time I redid it as a single shot HDR, and I think I like the results more than the original.
The photo was taken with a Nikon D700, with a Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 VR lens. The camera was mounted on a tripod to allow me to use a fairly slow shutter speed, which gives the flowing water a smooth texture. The camera is positioned on a small ledge overlooking a 50 foot drop, but because of all the trees this was the only place to get the shot. The RAW file was processed in Adobe Lightroom and then Photomatix, which does the HDR conversion and tone mapping.
I realize that the photos that I am processing as single shot HDR’s are not true HDR images. Sometimes the single shot image is necessary, especially when the scene contains moving objects. I need to start shooting some new images withs bracketed series, which will allow me to create true HDR shots. I’ll be interested to see how much of a difference there will actually be between the two methods.
I did head out today with the best of photographic intentions, but things just didn’t seem to go my way. I wasn’t happy with the light, and I didn’t really see any subjects that caught my attention. I knew I had a few more pictures from Maine which I wanted to convert to HDR, so I decided to use one of them today.
This image was made with a Nikon D700, with a Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 lens. I intentionally shot it at the short end of the lens, because I was looking to capture a wide image with a bit of a fisheye effect. The RAW file was processed in Adobe Lightroom and then in Photomatix for the HDR conversion and tone mapping.
I processed this photo with Topaz Adjust in several different ways after the HDR conversion was complete. Some of the results were a little too wild for my taste, so I decided to go with one of the more subdued versions. The HDR process has so many different possible looks that I’m still trying to figure out what I like. The only way to figure this out is to get more experience with the technique, but I’m looking forward to sorting it all out.
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